


An Introduction

by twineandhope



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Angst, But I am a soft bub who doesn't like when people are unhappy, But also, Canon Compliant, Deal with a Devil, Depression, Dreams, Humor, I know those seem contridictory but hear me out, M/M, Podfic Welcome, Post-Banquet, So he has to be in a pretty bad headspace at the start, So the angst is not at all the point, The angst isn't too bad I think, There just needs to be a reason why Victor agrees to the deal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 09:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15749280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twineandhope/pseuds/twineandhope
Summary: So what if Katsuki had skated Victor's program? It didn’t have to mean anything, didn’t have to upend his carefully balanced life. Wake up, eat, skate, win. Repeat.---Victor is not the type of person who would give up everything in his life to go to Japan. Luckily, the decision isn't only up to him.





	An Introduction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cirruss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirruss/gifts).



> This universe is a collaboration with cirruss, although I wrote this particular piece by myself. But it would not exist without her!

Victor’s not sure when, exactly, all the colours bled out of the world. It must have happened over time, gradually enough that he didn’t notice, that there’s no one instance he can pinpoint and say “ _there, that’s when I stopped caring, stopped wanting_.” It had reached the point where he couldn’t quite remember wanting, didn’t seem to desire anything any more, just woke up every day to his alarm, ate mechanically, skated mechanically, won another gold, smiled mechanically, went to bed and then lay awake for hours and then finally slept and then woke up and then did it all again.

It wasn’t a happy existence, but it was straightforward, almost comfortably bleak. Victor wasn’t the slightest bit interested in introspection (had never been, even back before he stopped being the slightest bit interested in anything at all), so on the rare occasions that he thought about it at all, Victor just thought that maybe it was easier this way. If he didn’t desire anything, he couldn’t be disappointed, and he could focus on not disappointing the world, his fans, his coach; just keep sinking a little further each day into Victor the icon and let Victor the person slip away, unnoticed and unmourned.

Wanting only made things harder. He’d been even more right about that than he realized, and he wished he didn’t know that now.

Katsuki Yuuri had danced into his life on a haze of cheap champagne and shed clothing, and for a few hours at the Sochi banquet, Victor remembered, with the sudden clarity of a punch to the gut, what a world in colour might look like, what it could mean to actually want something. For a few hours — and then Yuuri was gone as swiftly as he’d appeared, a bright memory that dazzled Victor like sunlight on snow, leaving him blinking and stupid as he tried to readjust to the dim haze of the rest of his life.

He watched every video he could find, dozens of times, devastated by Katsuki’s beauty, but unable to recapture that feeling from the banquet, that effervescent joy that had had Victor smiling and actually meaning it for the first time in as long as he could clearly remember.

Victor practiced smiling in a mirror, thinking of dark hair and flashing brown eyes, but all he could summon was his media smile, perfect teeth and perfect hair and god, Victor was so tired of being perfect, but after all this time he didn’t know how to be anything else. He told himself that it didn’t matter, that nothing had changed; he still couldn’t seem to want anything, and this new wanting to want was just painful for no reason, a staggeringly pointless exercise in futility.

But despite his best efforts, his mind kept coming back around to it. _“Be my coach, Victor!”_ Ridiculous. Katsuki was utterly drunk, probably didn’t know what he’d been asking, and Victor didn’t know how to be a coach, barely knew how to be a person, and how would any of it even work? It was ridiculous. It was crazy. Victor was good at exactly one thing, had never been interested in anything else. And if wanting to want was this painful, surely actually wanting something would be overwhelming, incapacitating. Better to stick to what he knew. Wake up, eat, skate, win. Repeat. Eventually, Victor told himself, the ache of it would fade, and he could return to being comfortably hollow. Eventually.

———

Victor had almost managed it when Katsuki swept into his life again, pixels on a screen that sang to Victor’s heart, and his heart sang back for the first time since the banquet, and he found himself on his laptop looking up airfare to Japan without really registering what he was doing, comparing schedules and trying to decide if he could make it in time to a flight that left in fourteen hours, or if he’d need to wait for the one tomorrow.

He eyed the row of tabs across the top of his browser, airlines and shipping companies and import rules for animals (for Makkachin). All of a sudden he snapped out of whatever haze he’d gotten himself into and thought, really thought, about what he was doing. _This is ridiculous_ , he told himself. _This is crazy_. He had a life, responsibilities. He didn’t know anything about Katsuki, not really, didn’t know how to be a coach, didn’t speak Japanese … He closed out of the window with a bemused sigh. Victor ached, felt more hollow than ever, but knew he’d made the right decision, the only reasonable decision. It wasn’t even a choice, really, just moving on from a moment of indulgence for an impossible fantasy.

Victor checked the time, shut his laptop and put it aside. It was time for bed; he had practice in the morning and he’d stayed up late enough as it was.

So what if Katsuki had skated his program? It didn’t have to mean anything, didn’t have to upend his carefully balanced life. Wake up, eat, skate, win. Repeat.

———

Victor didn’t usually dream.

His breath frosted in the cold air of the rink, and he glanced up, startled, to see Yuuri pushing off into the first moves of Stammi Vicino, graceful and emotive and right there, looking more real than Victor had felt in years, more beautiful than anything Victor could remember seeing, and Victor’s chest felt hot just from watching, his hands tingled, and he wondered, absently and then markedly, what that body would feel like under his hands, pressed up against him. Yuuri looked softer than he had at the banquet, in both his body and his expression, and Victor’s fingers twitched with the need to touch him, and no, wait, that wasn’t right, he wasn’t captivated by anything as straightforward as sex, as, as prosaic, and it would be a crime to interrupt this performance just to — and then Yuuri was finished skating, so Victor wouldn’t be interrupting anything, and Yuuri was standing very, very close, and reaching up, and:

“Wow,” Victor breathed, catching Yuuri’s shoulder to hold him at arm’s length. “That was, that was so beautiful, Yuuri, the way you move is like —” and Yuuri ducked out of Victor’s grip to step closer, so Victor stepped back, because Yuuri had just finished skating so beautifully and Victor needed, needed so badly to tell him, that, that he was — and Yuuri was dipping him at the Sochi banquet, smelling sweetly of sweat and champagne, and Yuuri’s hands were warm as he stood Victor upright, his breath hot in Victor’s ear as he whispered “Let’s get out of here,” and his tongue was wet against Victor’s as they made out in the elevator; his lips were smooth against Victor’s neck as Victor fumbled with the keycard to his hotel room, swiped it backwards and then too fast and then finally, finally the light flashed green and they were inside, and Yuuri’s body was firm against Victor’s as he pressed him down onto the bed, and, no, no, wait, _no_ , Yuuri was drunk, Yuuri was _drunk_ , and Victor turned his head away from Yuuri’s urgent kisses and wriggled out from under him and —

“Are you fucking _kidding me_!?”

Victor looked up, startled; he could have sworn there hadn’t been anybody else in the room, but now a tall stranger was standing just to the side of the bed, one hand clenched in his hair and wearing a look of utter frustration which so perfectly mimicked Yakov that Victor wondered for a moment if it was somehow Yakov — people could look different in dreams, and —

“No, of course I’m not Yakov!” the stranger gritted out, the other hand moving to his hair as well. “And you! You’re _impossible_!”

Yuuri yawned and curled up on the bed, awkwardly trying to pull the blanket over himself without moving from where he was lying on top of it.

“Seriously,” the stranger continued, “‘He’s drunk, I can’t?’ Seriously!? It’s a _dream_ , Victor, it’s not like there’s some real person here who might regret it in the morning. I could not have made it more obvious that this is a dream, and I know you’re attracted to him, I can tell, it’s my job, and you keep just…” he trailed off, apparently too frustrated to form words.

Victor shrugged helplessly. “Who … are you? What are you doing here? And why do you care if I —“ he gestured to Yuuri, now fast asleep on the bed, “— especially if it’s not even real?”

The stranger pouted, crossing his arms in front of him. “I was trying to prove a point. To make an entrance.” He posed dramatically, one arm extended toward Victor, then scowled and let his arms drop back to his sides. “But you had to go and ruin it.”

Victor was starting to get uncomfortable. “What would … that … possibly have proven?”

“That you’re still capable of wanting things! That you should care about things, that there’s more to life than being a gold medalist robot! That you should,” the stranger quirked an eyebrow, gaze going predatory, “take my offer.”

“I don’t know how to care about anything but skating,” Victor replied carefully. _And I think I’ve forgotten how to care about that_ , he did not add out loud.

“Then you need to be reminded!” the stranger effused. Victor supposed he ought to have expected that someone who could control his dreams would be able to read his thoughts, too.

“Who are you?” Victor repeated.

“That’s a bit complicated,” the stranger said, touching a finger to his lips in a thoughtful gesture. “I suppose you could call me a demon, if you wanted. It’s not particularly accurate, but it’s got a nice ring to it — plenty of poetic resonance — and I am, after all, here to make a deal.” He winked.

Victor shook his head. The stranger went on, “If you’re looking for something a little less expressive but a bit more informative, I suppose you could call me the manifestation of an abstract concept, made palpable by, let’s call it magic, and perhaps — with a little help from you — made flesh.” He pointed a delicate finger at Victor, beaming.

Victor looked more closely at the figure, realizing for the first time that he couldn’t actually make out any of the stranger’s features. What colour was his hair? What shape was his face? Impossible to tell. Victor supposed it didn’t matter much, if he wasn’t a real person. Victor hardly felt like a real person himself, most days; he could relate.

Thinking about that made him instantly exhausted, but the conversation clearly wasn’t over, so Victor put on his best media smile and — as always — did what was expected of him. Despite having no real interest in the answer, he asked the obvious question:

“What concept?”

It was obviously the correct response; the stranger looked delighted. His smile was vulpine, and he didn’t move but suddenly he was right next to Victor, breathing into his ear, purring “Can’t you guess?” and Victor just shook his head, and the stranger ran a hand through Victor’s hair and whispered, soft and breathy:

“Desire.”

And then he was back across the room, leaning back in a hotel chair with a leg draped across the armrest, pretending to examine his nails for a moment before looking up and chirping “So, are you ready to hear my offer?”

Victor raised a hand in acquiescence, an open-palmed gesture of “go on”. He was tired, so tired, but he suspected that at least this part of the conversation would be more familiar, less dizzyingly baffling. Victor knew what to do with someone who wanted something from him. Everybody wanted something from him. The magic didn’t change the situation, not really; it was just like impressing a sponsor. He put on his best politely attentive expression and waited.

“I have certain errands in your world that need doing, and simply put, I need to be you to do them. You’re sick of being you anyway, so it’s not like you’d be giving up much. It wouldn’t take long, no more than a year, probably, and if you feel the need to hang around in the background to make sure I don’t get up to anything you don’t approve of, well, turns out I can’t actually make you do anything at all if you decide to go against it. Or else you’d be on a plane to Japan right now.”

“That was you?”

Desire smiled, bright and unrepentant. “I had to at least try it the easy way. You’re more strong-willed than I expected. Which is why I was so hoping to make a proper first impression, but here we are.” He sighed, making a dismissive gesture with one hand.

Victor considered. He couldn’t say he wasn’t tempted by the idea of just … stopping for a while. Not having to keep being Victor Nikiforov, day after day. Wake up, eat, skate, win. Repeat. He was kind of sick of it. Kind of sick of himself. If someone else wanted his life, hell, they could have it.

“What would I have to do?” Victor asked neutrally, trying not to let on to the fact that he’d basically already decided. A pointless gesture, when Desire could read his mind, but it was reflex. Despite everything, it really did feel a lot like talking to a sponsor.

“Nothing at all! Just don’t get in my way.”

“I’ll consider it,” Victor offered, fiddling with a lapel of his suit jacket. Pointless to be cagey, but Desire swung his leg off the chair arm and leaned forward with his hands on his knees, face lit with bright enthusiasm like he really was still trying to sell Victor on the idea.

“Ah, but I haven’t even told you the best part! I know all about how you’ve been feeling, the emptiness, how you can’t seem to want anything no matter how hard you try. But, tell me, if it were possible, if you could actually manage to want something, what would it be?”

Victor’s eyes flicked unconsciously to the hotel bed, where Yuuri had wrapped himself into a burrito of tangled blankets. He looked back at Desire, didn’t say anything. Waited.

Desire grinned hugely, like a cat to a cornered mouse. “Well, then. Let’s go to Japan.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you liked it!


End file.
